Marquez and Castro, the writer and the dictator
IANS Monday 5th March, 2007
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is best known as an author, but like many
intellectuals he has never been far from politics.
Many of his forays into politics have been low profile - attempts to
encourage peace in Colombia, his civil-war-ravaged native country, for
example, Garcia Marquez has been much more open about his close
association for more than 30 years with Cuban communist leader Fidel
Castro, a friendship that has sometimes made the author a lightning rod
for criticism. Marquez turns 80 Tuesday.
In fact, Garcia Marquez mediated talks in Cuba between the Colombian
government and Marxist guerrillas.
Gabo, as the writer is nicknamed, and Castro became close in the
mid-1970s, when the writer had already published his work 'One Hundred
Years of Solitude' (1967) and was renowned all over the world.
Their relationship grew out of a shared interest in literature. Garcia
Marquez says that he soon 'discovered what only a few people know: Fidel
Castro is a voracious reader who loves and knows very seriously the good
literature of all time and who, even in the most difficult situations,
has an interesting book at hand to fill any void.'
Even during periods when large parts of the world's intellectual
community became critical of the Cuban Revolution over issues such as
censorship and the treatment of artists deemed part of the anti-Castro
opposition - most recently after a 2003 crackdown by Havana - Garcia
Marquez always remained loyal to Castro.
Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa even called Gabo 'the courtier' of
the Cuban president.
The famous author's political detractors say that he 'gave prestige to
the revolution, while Garcia Marquez's defence of Caribbean socialism
benefited him a great deal to win the Nobel Prize when he was not much
older than 50,' as Angel Esteban and Stephanie Panichelli put it in
their book 'Gabo y Fidel: El Paisaje De Una Amistad' (Gabo and Fidel:
The Landscape of a Friendship).
Garcia Marquez has always rejected accusations of 'loving power,'
insisting that his friendship with Castro transcends politics, and that
his access to the ear of Cuba's maximum leader has allowed him to
quietly save many dissidents.
Garcia Marquez, who penned the novel 'The Autumn of the Patriarch'
(1975), has himself overlooked Cuba's continued application of the death
penalty, which he has always universally opposed.
Since Castro was forced by illness last year to relinquish power
indefinitely, Garcia Marquez has remained on the scene.
When he travelled to the island in December for the public celebration
of Castro's birthday, he stayed for a month but was unable to meet with
his old friend. The Colombian magazine Semana noted that it was the
first time they had not met when Garcia Marquez visited the island,
reading it as a sign of Castro's widely speculated upon condition.
However, Garcia Marquez played down the incident.
'What makes me happiest about being able to come here now, for Fidel's
80th birthday,' he said, 'is that I will come for his 100th.'
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